


Sloane Square Station

by ShaylaMorgansen



Category: Elm Stone Saga - Shayla Morgansen
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:00:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25066564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShaylaMorgansen/pseuds/ShaylaMorgansen
Summary: Lady Miranda arrives at the tragic scene of a terror attack in London, and questions Renatus's motives. A deleted scene from 'Chosen'.





	Sloane Square Station

**Author's Note:**

> Happy birthday, Magic Makers! This month's deleted scene comes from a very early version of Chosen, before I understood my villain. I liked the scene, but it dominated the first book at the end of act one, leaving nowhere for the story to move afterward. I didn't have any villainy to top this until the end of Unbidden and it made every day with him at large an unacceptable risk. It upped the ante too early; the whole story would need to take place in only a few weeks. In a revision, I removed it and found the story took shape more naturally after that. I was sad to see the scene go, though, as I do love me some explosions and shootouts. 
> 
> How would you have liked the story to have kept this scene? How different would it be? Leave me a comment to let me know!

Sloane Square subway station was chaos. Lady Miranda, who had barely taken three steps out of the hospital after work when Qasim had alerted her, could not imagine what had sent the people into such frenzy. Susannah and Elijah were here, too, invisible through the hordes of terrified citizens, but somewhere nearby. A young mother, clutching her chubby toddler to her chest, shoved past Lady Miranda, sobbing in terror. She was not the only one. Miranda struggled to stay upright as hundreds of people flooded past her, desperate to escape this place of danger.

What had induced this panic?

Lady Miranda had long been fascinated with what happened to the human mind when it reached this height of panic. Instincts kicked in; consideration for others evaporated. All that remained was a need to survive. On this level, though, it was frightening to watch.

An overweight man with thick glasses ran straight into Lady Miranda, knocking her down without even noticing. As she fell towards the cement floor, a swift knee caught her across the nose. She would be trampled!

A firm hand found Miranda’s elbow, and pulled her to her feet. Renatus had arrived. He said nothing, though anything said here would be drowned in the screams and shouts of the panicking mortals.

He stepped in front of her and began the long, tedious fight against the crowd, pushing through towards Susannah and Elijah. Miranda stayed behind him; his height was an advantage against this mob that she didn’t have.

Somewhere off to their left, a loud bang sounded, followed by dozens of piercing screams. Many in the crowd ducked in terror, fearful of being shot or attacked. Renatus paused, and then used this tiny moment of near-stillness to move quickly through the throng, pushing and shoving with renewed vigour as he closed in on the source of this commotion. Lady Miranda tried her best to keep up, using her senses to feel around for her other two colleagues. She found Susannah first, and connected with her.

 _Can you see what’s going on_? she asked, squeezing through the gaps Renatus made in the crowd.

 _Not yet_ , Susannah responded grimly. _But we know who’s doing it_.

Lady Miranda closed her eyes briefly, wishing she could imagine this disaster away. _Lisandro_. It had begun.

Somewhere in the distance, over the sounds of heavy footsteps and terrified sobs, Miranda could hear shouting; a firm, commanding tone: “Police! Move aside!” He was a brave and well-trained man, she was certain, but would that be enough against Lisandro?

The crowd had finally begun to thin. Lady Miranda could now see Susannah and Elijah, pushing past people, sidling along the edge of the platform. Suddenly, Renatus stopped. Lady Miranda moved to stand beside him, wondering what had caught his attention, but she didn’t need to wonder for long.

Lying in a small heap were two human bodies, eyes open and glazed, faces contorted with a final expression of terror and pain. Smoking holes with the diameter of a jam jar had been blasted through their chests.

Dark magic, Miranda thought vaguely, is often thus – conspicuous, gruesome and terrible.

Susannah and Elijah reached them then, and gazed upon the scene with horror. Lady Miranda looked around. Further down the platform, an elderly man lay crumpled, and in the still-open doorway of the subway train, a young woman was sprawled. Both were obviously victims of the same attack.

Two policemen reached them, screaming, “Hands up! Police!”

“I’m a doctor!” Lady Miranda shouted back, complying with their orders all the same. She recognised one. “Lieutenant George, I’m Dr Rhode, from the Royal Hospital. We’ve met before.”

To everyone’s horror, another sickening bang sounded from the stairs leading above ground. The citizens who were still fighting their way up screamed in horrific unison, and they turned back. The police turned away from the White Elm and began racing in the direction of the new commotion, but Renatus was already ahead of them, a blur of black cloak.

Lady Miranda moved away from the heaped couple and dropped to her knees beside the girl in the doorway of the train. She was even younger than Miranda had thought at first – barely into her twenties. She was much too young, in any case, to die like this, at the hand of an arrogant idealist. The girl’s auburn fringe was swept across her pretty young face. Blood from her tragic wounds pooled beneath her back and neck, staining the ends of her ponytail, staining her crisp college blazer and dripping into the gap between the platform and the train.

 _This_ was the definition of tragedy. Lady Miranda lightly laid a hand on the girl’s cheek, feeling the last warmth of her skin, and knew that today, she had failed.

She was too late.

Two new bangs drew her attention to the stairs, from which many people were now running back towards her. Clearly visible, standing opposite one another in the very centre of the staircase, with people running blindly in any direction that was away from them, were two tall, black-haired men.

Lisandro’s hair was slightly longer than Lady Miranda remembered, but otherwise, he was the same. She’d known and respected him for eleven years, and despite his betrayal, his disappearance, his part in Peter’s death, and now this – this, undeniable proof that Lisandro could and would murder – she found it hard to believe that anyone could change so much, yet still look the same.

Had he really changed at all, though, or had she just not been looking properly to begin with?

At Lisandro’s feet was the body of a young man. In his arm was a little boy, whose mother stood, petrified, behind Renatus. The policemen were down, still as death, with smoke rising from their wounds. Lisandro and Renatus were exchanging words Lady Miranda could not hear. Susannah and Elijah were already hurrying towards them, desperate to help. She followed, although her duelling skills were not anything flash. She sensed that Lieutenant Alan George was still breathing, and hoped that there might be something she could do to save him.

The moment she reached Lieutenant George, she saw Lisandro carefully lower his young hostage to the steps. The boy ran to his mother. Lady Miranda, Susannah and Elijah all froze, waiting for Renatus to seize this moment and end this disaster.

But Renatus did not move. Lisandro nodded once to his successor, and evaporated, Displaced to heavens only knew where.

Numb with confusion, frightened by what she had just witnessed, Lady Miranda carefully lowered herself beside Lieutenant George. If she pretended she hadn’t seen, could she kid herself into believing it hadn’t happened? She didn’t want Renatus as an enemy. He was scary enough as an ally.

She turned Lieutenant George over so that he was facing the ceiling of the subway station. She saw that the hole Lisandro had blasted through his body had gone through his right shoulder, probably cutting through his lung and destroying all of the muscles in his shoulder, but not something she couldn’t fix.

Renatus slowly made his way towards her. Susannah and Elijah, with a small approving glance at one another, raised their wands at him threateningly. He stopped immediately.

“Explain what we just saw,” Susannah demanded. Renatus raised his hands a little so that they were visible to his captors.

“Lisandro killed the father and bound the child’s life to his own,” he said hollowly. He sounded tired. Lady Miranda had never known Renatus to look, sound, act or _be_ tired before. “I couldn’t kill him without destroying that woman’s family. We’ll have to break the bond now ourselves, to ensure that boy can be safe.” He met the eyes of Susannah, Elijah and Lady Miranda in turn. “I didn’t have a choice.”

After a moment of deliberation, Susannah and Elijah lowered their wands.

“Sorry,” Elijah mumbled. Renatus said nothing, but moved back towards the woman and her son. Elijah and Susannah followed. Lady Miranda heard Susannah tell the sobbing mother, “We’re doctors.” Susannah embraced the broken family as though to comfort them, and began working on pulling apart the links between the little boy and the murderer.

Lady Miranda began work on Lieutenant George, channelling healing energy into his body. She felt the missing section of his lung heal shut – the most vital step in this impromptu healing session. She began sealing chief points of bleeding and rerouting the blood flow along less major veins and arteries. The rest she could work on in hospital.

As she finished her work on the policeman and glanced around the subway station at the carnage that Lisandro had left in his wake, she could only wonder why he had done this and wish she could have been here sooner. Right now, she wanted nothing more than to find Lisandro and destroy him like he had destroyed the lives of his six victims and their families. She wanted him to pay for this.

Lady Miranda looked up at the woman who had lost her partner to Lisandro, who now rocked back and forth on her heels, hugging her son to her as though he might disappear if she let go. Miranda’s eyes sought and found Renatus, and though she understood his reasons and knew she would have done the same thing, she could not help thinking, _This is your fault_. _You let him get away_.


End file.
